


when i look at you

by RorschachIris



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Affirmation from the unlikeliest sources, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Magic, Angst, Bullying, Complete, Disclaimer: I know nothing about Eaton, Don't be bullies y'all, Drama, Except now it's more than three schools, F/M, House-ism, It's Halloween because Harry Potter, Kylo is a questionable influence, Minor Character Death, Name-Calling, Not Beta Read, Ostracization, Reverse/ambiguous Hogwarts House dynamics, Sharing wand cores, Triwizard Tournament, Yule Ball, i guess, inner conflict, obligatory Halloween fic, time skip, unspoken connection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:40:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27169441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RorschachIris/pseuds/RorschachIris
Summary: Rey met Ben Solo once, when she was a fifth year and he a seventh year. They shared an immediate connection, but parted on ambiguous terms.She meets him again six years later, and things are...different.Harry Potter AU
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Minor Kaydel Ko Connix/Poe Dameron - Relationship, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 26
Kudos: 108





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory Halloween Reylo fic! yaayyy
> 
> Also I honestly don't know if this will be finished before Halloween, but I will try my bestest.

Rey remembers when she first saw him. 

A tall, lanky, pallid teenager on the verge of adulthood, his tall frame just beginning to fill out. A shock of dark hair hiding cauliflower ears, a beak-like nose, a perpetual scowl—if his identity wasn’t so publically, unequivocally rooted in the Skywalker-Organa-Solo nexus, he could have been mistaken as the long-lost descendent of the late Severus Snape.

Rey, then a fifth-year, sat at the furthest end of the Slytherin table and watched with quiet, detached curiosity as the student representatives of various magical schools from around the world paraded into the Great Hall of Hogwarts. 

The Triwizard Tournament had recently been expanded to include several other schools from around the world. The student representatives of the small but fierce Honduran school, Instituto Mágico de Tegucigalpa, had just made their entrance, and next on the roster was an American school, the Skywalker Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a tiny, relatively new private institution on the east coast whose prestige now rivaled that of Ilvermorny.

Rey tapped her fingers restlessly against her cheek. As a fifth-year, she was not yet seventeen, and was ineligible to enter the Tournament, which made the entire occasion meaningless to her. She ached for a chance to prove to everyone that an orphaned nobody sorted into Slytherin could rise from humble beginnings to greatness, but alas, the age minimum was strictly enforced. 

A collective murmur rippled through the crowd as the American team entered. Behind the slightly-bent Master Luke Skywalker, his blue-gray robes flapping with every step, his deceptively bedraggled gray hair and beard obscuring most of his stern face, walked a single file of students in austere black robes. Rey looked quickly over the various faces, some apprehensive, others proud, others merely blank; she tried to guess if any of them were orphaned nobodies, like herself.

One boy near the end of the line jumped out at her almost as soon as he stepped foot into the Great Hall. He was ridiculously tall, his shoulders broad but thin, his steps slightly clumsy but determined. Everything about his manner and posture seemed primed, intense, ready to prove himself; but his expression was reticent, even nervous.

Someone near Rey immediately pointed him out as well, and a shiver of giggles ran through the nearby group of girls. 

“—Skywalker’s nephew, that one.”

“Him? He doesn’t look anything like his family.”

“Not much of a looker, is he?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” a dark-haired girl—Bazine, of the pureblooded Netal clan—giggled, resting her chin in her hand as she watched the newcomer. “I think he’s cute.”

“Heard he didn’t get sorted into any of Skywalker’s Houses,” someone pipes up.

“How’s that possible?”

“Dunno. None of them wanted him…”

Rey turned her attention back to the American students and watched as they wrote their names down on proffered slips of parchment and threw the slips into the Goblet of Fire. 

As the tall, dark-haired boy, presumably Master Skywalker’s nephew, turned from the Goblet, his eyes caught Rey’s, just for a moment. Startled by the sudden eye contact, she yanked her gaze away immediately.

She didn’t look away from the Goblet until the American contestants took their seats.

\---

Rey remembers the way he needed. 

It was a fall day like any other. She was out near Hagrid’s abandoned old hut, which, despite its general reputation as a crumbling, spooky old disaster of rock and clay, often served as a safe haven for Rey when she needed to escape her vicious Housemates. The days were steeped in autumn, growing shorter and crisper; the looming, magic-laden trees of the Forbidden Forest were cloaked in silver bark and leaves of gold, flame-red, rust-brown. The grass around Hagrid’s hut was still green and plush, and the sun provided much-welcome warmth, so she wrapped herself in her thickest cloak and plopped down on an exposed patch of grass, intent on getting a good round of studying in for the upcoming midterms.

She opened her Advanced Geomancy textbook to the bookmarked chapter and skimmed over the contents. Many of the forms that she was required to memorize were in Arabic, which was a language she still had some difficulty grasping. 

Her brow pinched, her mouth moving silently as she struggled around and over the elegant syllables, she tossed a handful of dirt onto a bare patch of ground and, using the tip of her wand, began to draw the symbols of divination. As her concentration intensified, a fog seemed to gather around her, shielding her from the rest of the world.

Suddenly, the hairs on the back of her neck straightened, alerting her to someone else’s presence; the protective fog around her dissipated as quickly as it had formed. She froze and looked up quickly, her eyes darting first to the Forest, then the abandoned hut, then the footpath behind her.

Advancing slowly down the winding path, frowning against the sunlight, his long black robes flapping around his legs with every robust puff of hillside wind, his leather satchel bouncing against his back with every step, was the American student. Master Skywalker’s nephew.

Rey tensed immediately, gathering her things to her chest and jumping to her feet. She didn’t know the first thing about this student, but she always found an abundance of caution to work in her favor when it came to her classmates.

He stopped at the last bend in the footpath, his dark eyes trained unblinkingly on her. From across the windblown landscape, her with her back almost pressed against Hagrid’s hut, him a lone figure standing against the sun-drenched hillside, they stared at each for a tense moment that seemed to stretch into eternity.

Finally, his expression unchanging, he turned his back on her and advanced towards the Forbidden Forest.

“Wait!” Rey shouted before she could stop herself. He turned to look at her, expression still unreadable. Embarrassed by her own outburst, she stumbled a few steps forward before kicking her feet up into a run.

“The Forbidden Forest is...well, forbidden,” she said as she came to a stop a few feet away from him. “Students aren’t allowed in there, ever.”

“I know it is, but it seems to be the only place where the damn students won’t follow me,” he replied, his scowl darkening.

As if on cue, a gaggle of girls—as well as a boy or two—appeared over the crest of the hill, their giggles and murmurs just audible.

“Well, if you can manage to find the Room of Requirement, that might be a better bet,” Rey said, huffing as she eyed the Forest. “Just as private, and less likely to kill you.”

He considered her for a moment, tilting his chin down to regard her with that disturbingly unreadable expression. “You’re actually going to prohibit me from going into this forest?”

She shifted her weight between her feet, glaring up at him. “Yes,” she insisted, going for intimidating, but sounding pathetic even to her own ears.

After a long pause, the corner of his mouth quirked up into a smile of amusement. Not quite the ideal reaction, but not a dismissive sneer, either.

“All right. Room of Requirement, you said?” He asked, already turning from her.

“That’s right,” she replied. “On the seventh floor, across from the tapestry of Barabas the Barmy. Walk in front of the wall three times, focusing on what it is you need.”

“What it is I need,” he echoed thoughtfully, his voice almost lost to the wind. “Right.”

\---

Rey remembers the way he watched.

As the only Slytherin student with no family and no recognizable surname, Rey was overlooked by most of her own House, and excluded from almost all student activities and groups. Her presence was usually only acknowledged when some of her particularly nasty classmates, both from Slytherin and from the other three Houses, needed an easy target to pick on, a nobody that no one else would bother to defend. Occasionally, she was subject to the condescending pity of a well-meaning Gryffindor, but sometimes that was even worse than the merciless teasing.

The only exception was the Slytherin Quidditch team, which she was allowed to join after it became apparent that, despite her slight build and nonexistent pedigree, she was the House’s most capable Keeper.

And so, clad in her Keeper’s armor, careful to keep her distance from her not-particularly-welcoming teammates, she walked out into the brisk autumn air and began to warm up in preparation for the weekly training session.

“Solana,” a voice called from the crowd that she was trying to keep away from. “Hey, Solana.”

She kept her eyes averted and stretched out her shoulders as one of the Beaters, Armitage Hux, approached her; without looking, she knew that he was twisting his mouth into a nasty smirk, and that he was itching for a fight. The best way to deal with him was to ignore his egotistical barbs, to laugh in his narcissistic face. And so Rey ignored him entirely as he approached.

“You better be ready today,” Hux said, stopping a few feet away from her. “Phasma and I have been trying out new strategies, and who better to test them on than you?”

Rey hinged forward from her hips and reached for her toes, stretching out her calves and hamstrings, still ignoring him.

“Did you hear what I said?” Hux pressed, his ire rising a notch. When they were first years, Rey learned very quickly that he _hated_ to be ignored. “You’re not coming away from today’s practice without a bloody nose and a broken bone, I can promise you that.”

Rey straightened and rotated her waist, loosening out her spine. She could sense some of her other teammates watching their exchange, and was more determined than ever to keep her cool.

“I’m talking to you,” Hux snarled; she could hear the crunching of grass and stray leaves as he stomped closer. “Don’t you dare ignore me, you filthy orphan _mudbloo_ —”

Rey waited until he was just a breath away from her, and, in one smooth motion, lunged, driving the blunt steel-enforced leather edge of her elbow guard into the unprotected rib area of his uniform. He fell to the ground in a furious, graceless clump, gasping from the unexpected blow.

The thing about purebloods—they always forget to guard against physical attacks.

Rey stared down at him for a moment, before deciding against wasting words on him and turning to pick up her broom from where it lay on the ground.

There was a rustle behind her as Hux dug around in his robes, and then the snarled beginnings of a spell. “ _Petrificus_ —”

“ _Protego!_ ”

A voice, deep and not immediately familiar, boomed from the stands, and Hux’s jinx bounced off of the shield, striking Hux right between the eyes. Hux froze in the middle of getting up, his wand at the ready, and crashed to the ground once again, this time completely immobilized by his own jinx.

As platinum-haired Gwendoline Phasma hurried over to Hux’s side, swearing, Rey turned toward the direction of the voice, wand in hand, searching the stands with her eyes.

A lone figure was up in one of the stands—unusual, since most Slytherin practices were not spectated. She squinted, pushing stray hairs that had escaped her tightly-wound bun behind her ears, and realized that it was _him_.

Behind her, the Slytherin Captain, Orson Krennic, marched up to where Hux lay on the ground and shook his head silently before calling two of the bench players to carry Hux to the Infirmary. Krennic was tolerant of Rey, though perhaps that was only because Rey was one of his most valuable players. He stared down Phasma when she tried to pin the jinx on Rey, and ordered the team to take up their usual practice positions.

Rey, ignoring the happenings behind her, stood there for a moment, unsure of how she felt. She was certain she could have handled Hux’s jinx—the idiot blundered most of his spells, anyway—and the nerve of this stranger to interfere bridled her.

In the distance, Master Skywalker’s nephew lowered his arm and stared at her; even from this distance, she knew that it was the same veiled stare as before, the one that gave away nothing.

“Solana,” Krennic barked from behind her, his voice brusque but impersonal. “Positions.”

She sniffed dismissively and turned her back on the stranger, mounting her broom and pushing off the ground to take her position in front of the goalposts.

And for the rest of that practice session, no matter how hard Phasma or Vos or Offee or anyone else came at her with demeaning insults and underhanded tactics, no matter how little the rest of her teammates seemed to care about this abuse, Rey, for once, was entirely unbothered.

As she deflected Quaffles and evaded bodily attacks, her attention was focused almost wholly on the stranger sitting in the stands, watching her every move with that unreadable expression.

\---

Rey remembers the way he asked.

She was in the library long after dinner, head bent over a dusty tome on Magical Art History, enraptured by the author’s description of the flow of ponderous, shadow-laden Baroque art into the frivolous pastel aesthetic of Rococo, when that prickling sensation on the back of her neck snapped her out of her studying and into an immediate state of alert.

She looked up from her reading, and there _he_ was, standing at the threshold of the library, the door swinging shut behind him. The librarian, apparently the late Madam Pince’s grandniece, looked up briefly in the stranger’s direction, frowned when she realized he was one of “those brutish American upstarts,” and fixed him with a knowing glare before turning her back.

He didn’t seem to take any notice of the librarian, though. His gaze was—as per usual, it seemed—drawn to Rey.

Rey looked down immediately, scanning the paragraphs, having lost her place. She tried not to flinch as the stranger walked up to her table and, with a quiet, unceremonious _thump_ , placed his pile of books on the table.

She turned the page, even though she was fairly certain she’d read none of the previous one; she kept her head bowed stubbornly, refusing to look up.

“You’re Rey Solana,” he intoned.

“Shhh!” The librarian immediately hissed, appearing behind him like a thin black vulture.

“I’m sorry, Madam,” the stranger said as he turned to glance apologetically but dismissively at the librarian.

As the librarian retreated, the stranger turned back to fix his eyes on Rey. Her scalp crawled at the sensation of his gaze on her.

“I’m Ben,” he said, whispering this time. “Ben Solo.”

She pretended to be fascinated by the written account of Watteau’s innovative uses of magic-infused paint. She waited for Ben to go on.

“I have to ask someone to accompany me to the Yule Ball,” he muttered, almost inaudibly.

Right, Rey thought to herself. He’d been selected as the Skywalker Academy Champion, to the enthusiasm of his classmates and the surprising impassiveness of his uncle. The selection had happened right before dinner; Poe Dameron, Gryffindor’s golden flyboy, had been selected as the Hogwarts Champion—

_Wait._ Rey looked up from her book, fixing her eyes on Ben’s slightly wrinkled collar. The Yule Ball—?

“Come with me to the Ball,” he whispered; to her surprise, it wasn’t from his lips, but through an invisible silver thread coiled somewhere deep in her brain. She jerked away from him, eyes narrowing.

“ _Occlumens_ ,” She hissed, earning herself a glare from the librarian. _Occlumens_ wasn't actually an incantation in the practice of Occlumency; just a convenient word that Rey focused on when she needed to empty her mind.

“Legilimency, Solo? Seriously?” She snapped when he withdrew from her as though burned. “Is that how you normally go about getting dates?”

But his eyes were wide with bewilderment. “I didn't do that on purpose!” He whispered vehemently. “I-I don't know what happened.”

The silver thread between them was still live, so Rey tested it like a tightrope walker testing a line. She felt no deception, but she also didn't know him very well.

“Look,” he sighed, “this started...on the wrong foot. _Way_ on the wrong foot. Can we...start over?”

Rey glowered. “As long as you stop it with the ‘accidental’ Legilimency.”

“I'm sorry,” he repeated solemnly, awkwardly, earnestly. “I've been practicing it recently, and I thought I had it under wraps, but—”

“Nevermind your excuses. What do you want?”

“What I said. Come to the Yule Ball with me.”

“I don't think I hear a proper question anywhere in there.”

“ _Would_ you do me the honor of _allowing_ me to escort you to the Ball?”

“Well, now, that's just sarcasm.”

He glanced up at her with a frustrated, worried expression, before getting to his feet. For a moment, it was as though she saw all of his misgivings, his nervousness, shining out at her from behind the guarded mask that was usually sealed in place.

“Sorry,” he mumbled as he turned away.

She watched for a moment as he made to leave, and her mouth opened on its own accord. “Solo, wait.”

“ _Ssshhhhhh!!_ ”

Rey winced. “Sorry, Madam Pince.”

The librarian glared at them with enough enmity to rival the gaze of a basilisk before disappearing around the corner of a row of bookshelves. Rey was very quickly using up the years’ worth of good will she’d accumulated with the crotchety old woman. She squirmed in her seat before motioning Ben back to her table. He sat down slowly across from her. 

She met his eyes. Looked away. Squirmed again.

“I just...I want to know why.”

“Why what?”

“Why you’re asking me. I mean, you clearly know nothing about me.”

“That’s not true.” Something like a smile quirked the corner of his lips. “I know that you prefer studying outdoors, where no one can find you. I know that you are a damn good Keeper. I know that you eat very quickly and very, very little at mealtimes, although I haven’t been able to figure out why.”

“Ben?”

Rey flinched at the voice, golden-smooth and sweet as honey. Ben frowned at her, before turning around to meet the gaze of a radiantly-smiling Bazine Netal, who glanced at Rey with the most cursory of looks.

“You’re wasting your time with that one,” Netal said carelessly as she examined the painted nails of one of her slender, soft hands. “She’s a nobody. Won’t be any good for you.”

Ben sat stock-still; Rey was just grateful that she didn’t have to see his reaction. She averted her gaze to her textbook and waited for the exchange to be over.

“I’m a couple aisles down with Armitage and Kaydel, if you find yourself craving more elegant, refined company,” Netal said, flashing pearl-white teeth before turning on her heel and, with a swish of her custom-tailored cashmere robes, disappeared around a corner.

Ben didn’t turn around for a long time.

“The _fuck_ was that?” He finally said when he did turn, and when he saw the emotionless expression on Rey’s face, his anger turned to vaguely horrified curiosity.

“Nothing,” Rey whispered. “This happens all the time.”

“Why do they treat you like this?”

“Because I’m a nobody.”

“No one’s a nobody.”

“Well, I am.”

“What qualifies you as a nobody?”

“I’m an orphan. When I received my Hogwarts acceptance letter, I was at a Muggle orphanage. I don’t have money, or a surname that anyone in the magical community recognizes, or even a pretty face or magnetizing personality to make up for it all. In the Slytherin house, that’s a death sentence.”

“But what does any of that matter?” Ben asked; something in his eyes blazed, which surprised and unnerved her.

“It’s all that matters with these people, Ben.”

“But you’re a better witch than the whole lot of them.”

“...What?”

“I mean,” Ben said, tilting his chin down towards her book, “I’ve seen the books you carry around, the spells you’re capable of casting; you’re flying way over the heads of your classmates. And when I ran into you out by that hut, you were studying _geomancy_. What student can handle geomancy?”

“What’s wrong with geomancy?” Rey demanded.

“Nothing. That’s not what I meant.”

“What _did_ you mean?”

“I _meant_ ,” Ben said, increasingly provoked, “that none of these kids have anything on you. You’re probably the smartest, most ambitious witch here.”

“Right.” Rey snorted as she shut her textbook. “Smartest, most ambitious. Yep.” She stuffed her textbook into her satchel and got to her feet quickly; Ben mirrored her motion, that insecure concern suddenly showing through his eyes again.

She didn’t stay to examine his expression; she stepped around him and made to leave the library.

At least he had the courtesy to stay quiet until they’d both cleared the doors.

“Wait,” he said, catching the sleeve of her plain cotton robe with his fingers. “You don’t believe me?”

“Why don’t you ‘take a hint,’ as you Americans put it?” Rey snapped, yanking her sleeve out of his grasp.

“You think I’m teasing you. You think I’m not sincere when I ask you to the Ball.”

“Ah, so there’s something growing in that skull, after all.”

He pressed his lips together. “Give me a chance to prove myself.”

“How?”

“Meet me on the night of the Yule Ball. The Great Hall steps. At five o’clock in the evening, sharp.”

“Right. Great Hall, five o’clock. Got it,” Rey scoffed, turning her back on him.

“Just one chance,” he called after her, ignoring the stares of a small cluster of students walking by. “I won’t let you down.”

“Promises, promises,” Rey mumbled under her breath as she stalked away from the library, study session effectively ruined. How dare this brooding, tactless American interrupt her study time, only to tease her?

Her? Accompany Benjamin Solo, the American Champion, to the _Yule Ball?_ The thought was so preposterous, so beyond hope, that laughter began bubbling up in her chest. She struggled to tamp it down as she stomped back to the Slytherin common room.

\---

Rey remembers his attentiveness.

She’d stood at the base of the wide, sweeping marble steps leading into the Great Hall, having arrived five minutes early, wearing her only dress—a black chiffon monstrosity, too loose where she wanted it to be tight and too tight where she wanted it to be loose—and her only heels—silver cat-heeled slippers that looked more like a little girl’s dress-up shoes than a respectable woman’s footwear. She’d let her hair loose in order to cover the poor-fitting shoulders, and risked a mending spell she was unfamiliar with to restore a ripped pair of nude tights. Makeup and jewelry were a no-go, hands down. 

As she shifted her weight restlessly from foot to foot, her cheap shoes already beginning to pinch her toes, she berated herself for being here in the first place, for allowing herself to believe—even for a moment—that someone as distinguished and desirable as Ben Solo would _actually_ want to take her to the Ball. There just wasn’t any way that he was being sincere. Not after years of everyone else telling her that she was worth nothing. Not even when a small part of her wanted to fight back, to prove them wrong.

The clock struck five then, and her nerves wound tighter and tighter with every chime until she could no longer bear the pressure. She turned to flee, and almost ran headlong into Ben’s chest.

“Giving up on me so quickly?” He asked, his voice teasing but gentle.

She stumbled back a step and glared up at him, hoping to mask her frayed nerves with a scowl.

“Well,” he said after a beat, leaning back from her slightly and stuffing his massive hands into his pockets as he gave her a perfunctory once-over. “You sure clean up nice. Although I think I like you in your Keeper gear more.”

Rey looked away, eyes prickling with sudden tears.

“Hey,” Ben said, his voice gentling immediately as he leaned in. “I’m not making fun of you. You look nice.”

Rey picked at her sleeve as she shot Ben an incredulous look. “I’m wearing a fake chiffon dress that doesn’t fit me, and my shoes are dumb, and—”

“I can see that you aren’t happy with what you’re wearing. I’m just trying to tell you that I think you look nice, regardless. It’s called a compliment, Rey.”

A compliment? Rey looked away again, stricken. She couldn’t detect any sarcasm or viciousness in his words. He was genuinely trying to compliment her. Why couldn’t she accept it like a normal person? What was wrong with her?

Ben realized that people were staring, and moved to block Rey from prying eyes with his wider frame. Rey wiped quickly at her eyes, her words stuck in her throat.

“Tell you what,” Ben said, taking her hand. “We just have to open the dance, and after that, you can leave if you want. But for now, let’s just ignore everyone else and try to have ourselves a good time. What do you say?”

Rey looked hard at his fingers, interlocked with hers, before raising her eyes to examine Ben’s face closely. He, to his credit, stood there calmly, patiently.

“Why me?” She whispered. She watched carefully for any signs of pity or disgust, but could discern none.

“I don’t understand what these people think of you, or why,” Ben finally said. “But you’re _not_ a nobody. Not to me.”

Later, as he led her onto the dance floor for the first number, she thought of a slight obstacle.

“I’ve never danced in my life,” she hissed at him as he held her hand and placed his other hand on her waist.

He looked at her, eyes wide, before smirking slowly.

“Don’t laugh at me,” Rey demanded crossly. “I’ve never had any use for such frivolous—”

“I’m not laughing at you,” Ben tutted as the music began, and as he began to lead. “Here, we’ll go slow. Don’t pay attention to the music; just follow my lead. Ah, ah—don’t look at your feet.”

“Well, where am I supposed to look?”

“Just look at me. Relax, stop fighting me.”

“Dammit, Solo, I’m not trying to fight you—”

He tugged lightly on her waist then, bringing her chest flush against his, and the closeness, which was already almost unbearable, became even more intensely uncomfortable. She turned her face away, wishing she could just keel over and die on the spot.

“That’s it,” he murmured, steering her about the room with more ease now that she was pressed closer. “Just relax and let me spin you around for a bit, and then we’ll be done.”

“There will be no spinning, Solo.” She was still grumpy and uncomfortable, but this physical closeness was...nice. A sort of hug, perhaps. Novel. Strange. But nice.

A chuckle. “As you say.”

Rey looked anxiously around her as Ben guided them from point to point across the floor. It was as she feared; people were clustering at the edge of the dance floor, craning their necks, staring, whispering. The sweeping classical music, determined to outdo itself, made it blissfully difficult for Rey to hear anything in particular, but she didn’t like the looks on her classmates’ faces. As Ben turned them, angling away from a cluster of Slytherin girls, Rey caught a glimpse of Master Skywalker’s scowl, which certainly didn’t help anything.

“What did I say?” Ben murmured above her ear.

“What?” She frowned up at him.

“Don’t look at them. Just look at me.”

She blinked up at him. Swallowed. As she allowed herself to be pulled out of her own swirling, hyper-aware mind, the jumble of music and whispers and laughter began to fade into a harmless muddle.

“We’re just here to have ourselves a good time.” She whispered his words back at him.

He smiled encouragingly at her. “Are you beginning to have a good time yet?”

She thought for a moment, honestly unsure. She was probably going to get teased mercilessly for this; she was sure that many of the other Slytherin girls would try to put her back in her place, watchful for every opportunity to remind her of her low breeding, or to criticize her dress, her shoes, her graceless dancing.

But right then, in that moment, she was...enjoying herself. She was ready to forget about the teasing, the abuse, the dullness that she would have to return to the next day. At least for the moment, in this room suffused with the faint, sweet aroma of mulled cider and roasting meats and fresh bread. At least while the bewitching glow of candlelight cast a sumptuous, almost sensual glow on the Hall, like a layer of fine golden gauze. At least while she was dancing with Ben.

She nodded up at him. She realized she was smiling.

\---

Rey remembers his protectiveness.

He’d made it through the first task, a little scuffed about the knees and elbows but otherwise unscathed. Rey hadn’t seen him since he’d stumbled out of the arena, the bristles of his broom burnt to a crisp, a Peruvian Vipertooth dragon sprawled motionless across the rocks. The crowd had been roaring after witnessing a hair-raising duel between the beast and the brooding, reticent American Champion, but Rey had been silent, watching as Ben limped back into the castle.

It was the day before the second task. There was no indication yet as to what the second task would be, but it would have to be something more difficult than defeating a dragon. And defeating a dragon was no easy task.

She was cutting across the grass down to Hagrid’s hut, and was so preoccupied with guesses as to what the second task could be that her guard was completely down.

When someone hit her from behind with a _Petrificus Totalus_ , she fell like a pathetic sack of bricks, and rolled and bounced down to the base of the hill.

“So sorry,” someone puffed behind her. Her blood pounded in her ears, and fear and anger swelled up in her chest as she waited for whomever it was to reveal themselves. A pair of leather-booted feet shuffled to a stop in front of her face, and the person crouched down to examine her for a moment. From the corner of her eye, she was able to make out the person’s face.

“So sorry,” Professor Kenobi repeated, sheathing his wand and turning her over with gentle hands. “I didn’t like this method, but the other judges agreed that the element of surprise would be absolutely crucial to the success of the second task…”

The second task? Rey struggled against her invisible bonds, of course to no avail; her breath came out in fast, harsh huffs.

“Try to keep calm,” Professor Kenobi said as he struggled to pick Rey up. “I’ll explain everything…”

And that was how Rey wound up petrified and tethered to the bottom of the Hogwarts lake, surrounded on all sides by merpeople who eyed her like she was their next meal.

The second task, as it turned out, was for the Champions to rescue someone they cared about from the bottom of the Hogwarts lake before the timer ran out. And, for whatever daft reason, the judges of the Tournament had chosen her as Ben Solo’s damsel in distress.

Through the strange greenish light that permeated the murky lakewater, she was able to make out the blurry outlines of Kaydel Ko Connix, who happened to be Dameron’s ex-girlfriend—strange, why pick his ex?—and an American student, Finn Boyega, whom Vietnamese Champion Rose Tran had asked to the Yule Ball. There were others, but Rey could not recognize anyone else immediately.

Professor Kenobi had warned her from breathing too quickly or deeply, since the air in the Bubble-Head charm that was currently bound around her head had only a finite amount of oxygen, but she couldn’t help huffing in anger and embarrassment. Not only had she been prevented from entering the Tournament on the sole basis of her age; she was now being used as a helpless thing needing rescue, a fucking _trophy_ waiting to be plucked—

Another huff of embarrassment, another violent and entirely futile round of struggling against the invisible bonds of the petrification spell. Professor Kenobi might be a soft-spoken, inconspicuous old man, but he knew his spellwork.

It wasn’t long until she heard the cannon go off, muffled by the many meters of water between her ears and the surface of the lake. And shortly after that, the merpeople circling her jerked to attention, as though they’d sensed something else in the water.

He’s coming. Ben’s coming.

_I’m coming._

Rey started—was that Ben using Legilimency again?—but before she could get upset about it, the merpeople around her shrieked and began swimming away in hordes, their teeth bared, their tails kicking powerfully. Rey watched and listened, utterly helpless, as the merpeople began to attack the Champions.

Within moments, however, the shrieking stopped suddenly, as though someone had sucked their voices out of their throats. The seaweed waving languidly beneath her feet continued to sway like ghosts; the water was frustratingly opaque, pungent, silent. For a moment, Rey wondered if she’d misinterpreted the sounds; she wondered if the Champions had been killed.

Then, a sudden burst of movement from her left, and Ben was swim-flailing headlong into view, his Bubble-Head charm shrinking dangerously, his wand clutched in one hand, his eyes wild. 

She watched as he mouthed her name, taking in her petrified state, the cuff around her ankle that kept her from floating to the surface. With quiet savagery, just before the bubble around his head imploded, he held the tip of his wand to the cuff and mouthed an incantation. The shackle fell away, and Rey felt the invisible hold of the petrification spell vanish. Then, as the bubble around Ben’s head shattered and as his last gasp of breath escaped into the rushing water in fat, lustrous bubbles, he hauled Rey to his chest and kicked upwards toward the surface.

A flash of sunlight; a distant roar that grew and grew until it seemed to fill Rey’s head. The Bubble charm around her head fell away, and water lapped at her hair, her nose, her cheeks. She pushed her quickly-dampening hair out of her face and turned to where Ben should have bobbed up beside her, and found him treading water, gasping and sputtering for air, his hair plastered to his forehead. 

Taking a deep breath, Rey turned away from him and did her best half-paddle, half-flail to the nearest pier where a gaggle of students were standing, ogling and cheering. One of the Tournament judges hauled her out of the water by her armpits and made cooing sounds as she struggled to her feet. Shrugging off the well-intended attention, Rey silently accepted the towel that someone handed her and turned to watch as Ben was helped out of the water as well.

He stood there, water running down his body in generous rivulets, his simple shirt and trousers sticking to his skin. Behind him, Dameron propelled himself from the lake with Connix in tow, and landed with a _thump_ on the pier; he rolled the still-unconscious girl onto her back, ignoring the shouts and proffered towels and _Calidi Caeli_ charms, and laughed with relief when at last she opened her eyes and promptly slapped him across the face. 

Kylo passed a hand over his face, heaved another breath, and looked up, meeting Rey’s eyes. 

Against her better judgement, she allowed herself to stare back. And, so used as she was to his blank mask, the outpouring of intense emotion that she saw in his eyes startled her, and frightened her a bit as well.

“ _Occlumens_ ,” Rey muttered, just in case. And she turned and stalked away.

\---

Rey remembers his promise.

For days after the second task, Rey avoided her usual haunts and sought out new ones—a patch of grass that was just out of the Whomping Willow’s reach, the abandoned girls’ bathroom that once was the entrance into the basilisk’s home, and occasionally the Room of Requirement. She snuck food out of the Great Hall during breakfast so that she wouldn’t need to return for lunch or dinner; she walked quickly from class to class, taking obscure routes; and in the evenings, she sealed herself off in her room, with only her books and bed for company.

Somehow, Ben figured out her Whomping Willow hideout, and was lurking near the school entrance when she packed up her bag and began to head in after a long afternoon of studying. Her eyes were cast down to the ground, and she was turning a geomancy incantation over in her head, trying to internalize the elaborate, poetic syllables, when she nearly collided with him.

“Why are you avoiding me?” Was the first thing he demanded as she skittered back a step in surprise.

She looked away quickly. “I’m not avoiding you.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m _not._ ”

“You won’t even look at me.”

She frowned at the cobblestone path and refused to answer, waiting for him to move out of her way.

“Look,” he said in a low voice, shuffling a step closer. “I’m sorry about the second task. I didn’t know they would do such a thing.”

“It’s not your fault,” she mumbled.

“It _is_ my fault,” Ben insisted. “I took you to the Yule Ball, which made you a target. I put you in danger. I’m sorry.”

“Fine,” she gritted out.

“I’m just trying to apologize.”

“I don’t want your apology.”

“What do you want?” 

“Just leave me alone,” she said with a sigh. “I just want to go to my room.”

“You’re not eating, you’re not talking to anyone,” Ben said, with an almost accusatory color to his voice. “You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

“Wow, thanks.”

“I’m just—”

“Get out of my way, Solo,” Rey said, finally looking him in the eye. “I want to be left alone.”

He frowned down at her, took another step towards her. But before he could say anything, she drew out her wand and pointed it at him. His was out a moment later, pointed at her; he stared at her, wide-eyed.

“Get out of my way,” she repeated.

“No,” he challenged.

“ _Alarte Ascendare!_ ” Rey shouted. 

At the same moment, Ben yelled “ _Protego!_ ”

But instead of either spell being cast, a burst of light exploded from the tips of their wands with a loud crack of sound and connected in the space between them, fizzing and sparking like a firecracker. Rey felt an invisible force threaten to propel her backwards, and she dug her heels into the ground, squinting against the bright light issuing from her wand. She could just barely see Ben’s conflicted expression, flickering between fear, confusion, and awe.

She mustered her strength and _pushed_. To her surprise, Ben yielded quickly to her, withdrawing where she pushed.

“I’m sorry,” he yelled over the roar. “I don’t know what’s happening. I swear it’s not me!”

And then she saw—she saw—

She snapped her wand away with an abrupt motion, ending whatever connection it was that had sparked between them, and stumbled a few steps back, heart racing, mind whirling. In the sudden, disorienting stillness that followed, she listened to the sound of his ragged breaths. She took another step back.

“You can’t run from this,” Ben called after her abruptly, between breaths; he looked as though he’d just survived a centaur stampede, but his eyes crackled with intensity as he watched her. “Whatever just happened between us… You can run away from it now, but it’ll catch up to us. You know it will.”

Rey continued to back away. It was as though every nerve ending in her body had been frayed to the quick, every muscle pushed beyond its limit. Whatever happened just now felt significant, but it frightened her beyond words. 

To her utter relief, he stepped away from her as well. Before he turned and disappeared back into the school, she heard him murmur:

“I’ll see you around.”


	2. Chapter 2

Rey knocks on the door of her neighbor, Ahsoka Tano, with Cat in her arms. Not five seconds later, the petite dark-skinned woman throws her front door wide open, smiling widely, still wearing her usual navy striped hijab, and sporting a frilly apron over a faded slouchy sweater and leggings; as soon as Ahsoka’s door opens, Rey catches a mouthwatering whiff of lamb stew.

“Rey!” Ahsoka exclaims in greeting. “What a nice surprise. And you’ve brought Cat, too!”

“Hey, Ahsoka,” Rey says, smiling at the person who has been, and will probably be, her only friend. “I’m really sorry about this, but—”

“Last minute work thing, need me to look after Cat for a few days?”

Rey sighs. “Do I really do this that often?”

“Oh, I don’t mind it at all. Cat is such an adorable furball,” Ahsoka says, smiling as she rubs the space between Cat’s ears with a thumb; the orange-and-white, normally-stoic cat closes his eyes and purrs. 

“I have all of his usual stuff in his bag,” Rey says, shifting to unloop the giant cartoon cat print bag that’s currently sagging on her shoulder. “Food, toys, meds, the usual. And you have my number, if anything happens while I’m gone.”

“And how long do you think that will be?” Ahsoka asks as she takes the proffered bag.

“I don’t know,” Rey replies ruefully as she sets Cat down on the carpet of Ahsoka’s flat. “Could be a day, could be weeks. As usual.”

“Any luck on getting them to give you a raise? I mean, the way they’ve got you running from job to job, with no idea when it’ll be done…” Ahsoka laughs lightly, but Rey knows that she's only half-joking.

“I’m working on it,” Rey sighs, smiling weakly. “Anyway, I’ve got to catch the three o’clock. I’ll let you know if anything terrible happens to me?”

“Sounds good,” Ahsoka says. “Stop by my door when you’re done packing; I’d like to send you off with some of the tajine I’ve got going.”

“Oh, gosh, Ahsoka, you don’t have to.”

“I want to,” Ahsoka promises, grinning sincerely. “Go on now, you don’t have much time.”

“Thanks.” Rey smiles what she hopes is a genuine smile; she smiles so infrequently these days that she doesn’t even know what her face must look like. Ahsoka, however, seems satisfied, and shoos Cat gently into her flat before closing the door.

Rey turns and hurries back to her flat, and swiftly packs a Shrinking Bag with the barest of essentials. She double-checks her flat for anything that needs to be put in order. Finding everything in her tiny, bare living space to be wholly, unremarkably in place, she changes into her usual—a thermal shirt under a thick jumper, thermal leggings under her jeans, her snow boots with the sound rubber soles, and her witch’s thick woolen cloak with the deep and numerous, pockets thrown on over everything.

The Ministry had warned her for years to not live like- or among Muggles, to not dress like a witch in such a Muggle-thick part of London; but she was never able to shake her habits from her days in the orphanage. After graduating, she’d moved back into a Muggle part of London that she was familiar with, nestled among the non-magical people and their ingenious contraptions and their mundane concerns and their dull, cog-in-a-machine lives. She befriended Ahsoka, who, despite their vast cultural differences, was unfailingly kind and hospitable to her; she dressed in some form of typical witch garb and took an ordinary Muggle bus to work every day, but drew very few judgmental stares or questions; she was, more or less, accepted and let alone as just another person, with her own set of quirks.

_Imagine living among insufferable Gryffindors and cloying, passive-aggressive Slytherins all day._ She shudders at the thought and, hurrying, shrinks her bag with a tap of her wand, slips both bag and wand into a pocket of her coat, and locks the door to her flat behind her. 

She hesitates a moment, before knocking on Ahsoka’s door; true to word, her neighbor once again throws her door open, this time with a plastic container of tajine over rice and a napkin-wrapped plastic fork in hand.

“Give that bossman of yours my usual greeting!” Ahsoka says as she hands Rey the food. “And good luck! Try to stay safe!”

Ahsoka’s usual ‘greeting’ to Rey’s boss is, contrary to her usual nature, a string of colorful Arabic insults. Even though Ahsoka, a Muggle international student studying at the university down the street, knows nothing about magic or Aurors or the Ministry, Rey finds it easy to confide in her neighbor about the various woes of her job as an Auror.

Because being an Auror sucks. Especially if you happen to be a nobody Slytherin.

Rey’s boss, Dameron, who is now married to Connix and is a new father to boot, is actually mostly civil to Rey; he refrains from taking cheap shots at her obscure background and House designation, and seems to value her for her abilities as a witch. The rest of her co-Aurors—Gryffindors mostly, with a scattering of Hufflepuffs and the occasional adventurous Ravenclaw—do not offer her the same courtesy, and Dameron generally turns a blind eye to their microaggressions against Rey. It turns out that transitioning from Hogwarts to the Ministry of Magic merely meant that the insults became subtler, cut deeper.

Rey runs a hand over her eyes before she steps out into the street. Perhaps the only reason why Dameron tolerates her is because she’s able to pick up last-minute stray missions, like the one she’s rushing off to now. As the only Auror without a family to take care of, or a partner to answer to, she is by far the most flexible Auror on the team, and several of the more difficult, more secretive, more fluid missions have gone to her.

Not that anyone is interested in giving her an ounce of credit, though.

\---

“You’ve had time to read the briefing?” Dameron asks absently as she stands to attention in his office. The former Gryffindor star student now has shocks of gray running through his once-youthful dark curls, and wrinkles are beginning to appear around his heavily-lidded eyes and animated mouth.

“Yes, sir,” she replies. _I’m the only one who reads them._

“State the general terms back to me.” 

It’s routine and sensible, but annoying. Rey swallows and begins to rattle off the basic details of her mission.

“Several First Order associates of Kylo Ren, rogue wizard from the States, have been sighted in Eaton, near an abandoned residence. I’m to join Snap Wexley and Beaumont Kin in thirty minutes to take the rail to Eaton, to avoid leaving a magical trace. We're to meet Finn Boyega from MACUSA, who will escort us to the safe house and debrief us. The objective will be to lay low, perform recon, and report back regularly. Until something changes.” 

“Très good,” Dameron mumbles in his usual odd way as he roots through the mess of papers on his table. “Excuse me, just looking for… Ah, here we go. Zorii has arranged tickets to Eaton for all three of you. Here's yours.”

Rey struggles to keep her face blank as she accepts the ticket with a murmur of thanks. Zorii Bliss, who is brazenly open about her disdain for Muggles, must have had a difficult time figuring out how to procure rail tickets.

“And here’s a list of First Order associates we suspect to be in the area,” Dameron continues, handing her a slim portfolio. “We don't know much about them, other than the fact that a former Gringotts Cursebreaker is among them.”

Rey flips through the moving photos and clipped text, wondering which Cursebreaker it is. Gwendoline Phasma’s face appears, much to her surprise.

“Phasma will know me,” Rey says quietly. 

“Nothing a little Polyjuice won't fix,” he says, waving his hand dismissively. “Speaking of which, here is your set of Polyjuice DNA samples. You know what to do if you run out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“There’s not much more to discuss,” he muses, still avoiding her eyes as he shuffles papers about; as civil as he is towards her, he can never seem to look her in the eye. “Should you need a car rental, bring back the receipt so that we can reimburse you. See Zorii before you head out; she’ll give you some rudimentary papers for...er, blending in with Muggles and the like.”

“Yes, sir,” Rey mumbles.

“And be careful out there. We don’t know much about the First Order, and we don’t even know what Ren looks like.”

MACUSA is notorious for being unwilling to own up to its failures; perhaps its greatest failure to date is Kylo Ren, a Dark wizard who is rumored to be a former MACUSA operative. Despite asking for the Ministry's aid in investigating First Order activity in the UK, MACUSA has revealed startlingly little about Ren himself.

As usual, she’s being sent into this virtually blind. Wexley and Kin, having just begun their Auror careers recently, won't be of much use. She will be forced to be flexible and resourceful, far more so than her salary merits.

As usual.

Rey grits her teeth and nods.

“I'll be careful, sir,” she says blandly.

Dameron grunts, and she’s about to excuse herself when he suddenly freezes; she watches, a spike of anxiety flaring in her chest, as he wrinkles his nose.

“What is that smell?” He says after a pause.

“What?” Rey sniffs the air. “Oh, it’s lamb stew. My neighbor gave some to me.”

“Oh,” Dameron says, making a face. “Well, to each their own. Stay safe out there, Solana.”

She looks at him for a long moment, before turning slowly for the door.

\---

“Look,” Finn Boyega says when he picks her, Wexley, and Kin up at a tiny terminal near Eaton. “MACUSA probably didn't say this to you, but we're grateful to have you guys here with us, on the ground. We'd be lost without you.”

Rey, caught off guard by his almost conspiratorial tone, glances at him and smiles uncertainly. From the backseats of the car, Wexley and Kin mutter something polite.

“In fact,” Finn continues, “I personally am _so_ grateful that I'm going to let you guys in on a secret that you definitely didn't hear from me. You get my drift?”

_What?_ Rey stares at him, feeling increasingly uncomfortable. They pull up to a red light, and Finn leans in.

“Rumor has it that Kylo Ren’s real name is Ben Solo,” he says in a stage whisper.

Ben Solo. _Ben Solo._ It takes Rey a moment to collect her thoughts as she's rocketed down memory lane. 

Behind her, Wexley shuffles around. “Who's Ben Solo?” He asks quietly.

Finn glances at him in the mirror. “Skywalker’s nephew. Also the son of Leia Organa, Madam President of MACUSA.”

“Big deal, then,” Kin mutters, sounding mildly disdainful. “Privileged kid on some misguided adventure?”

Rey grimaces, embarrassed. Have Wexley and Kin read _anything_ since becoming Aurors?

“If only,” Finn snorts. “Unfortunately, Ren is extremely convinced that his crusade to integrate the magical community with the Muggle world is a righteous cause, one worth sacrificing everything for—his family, his friendships, his career with MACUSA—everything. It may seem misguided to us, but he believes in his cause, no doubt about it.”

The thought of Ben Solo evokes teenage hormone-fueled memories from six years ago; intense dark eyes, confusing words and feelings, her wand jerking in her hand as it strained towards Ben's wand.

She'd read up on that strange occurrence. Apparently, it was some kind of phenomenon that was typically associated with wands that shared not only the same core material, but the same source from which the core material was derived. 

Her wand, according to Ollivander, was white oak, with a single phoenix feather—the outermost primary left wing feather. Which, apparently, meant that Ben's wand contained the outermost primary _right_ wing feather of the same exact bird. What were the odds?

She turns her head, avoiding Finn’s pointed gaze—Finn must remember that she was Ben’s damsel in distress during the Tournament—and stares out at the bleak country landscape. The steel blue sky and the thick blanket of snow covering the skeletal trees and slumbering fields and narrow roads soothe her nerves as she thinks. 

“Anything else that might be helpful?” She asks quietly as the traffic light goes green, and as Finn maneuvers the battered old car onward.

“Afraid not,” he sighs, tapping the steering wheel with his fingers. “If there's one thing Ren is good at, it's keeping his secrets safe.”

“Hm.” Rey frowns at the passing winterscape as she thinks. “Where do you suggest we start?”

“More like who,” Finn replies. “I'd say we want to start with some of the locals, see if they've seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. There aren't many witches or wizards out here, so getting around to all of them shouldn't be difficult. We could try canvassing the area with _Appare Vestigium_ spells, but I'm not sure that will turn up anything.”

Rey sighs. “Thanks, Finn. We appreciate you telling us what you know.”

“Hey, no problem,” he says goodnaturedly. “Ren's our mess, anyhow. Figured it wouldn't be fair to keep you in the dark.”

As Finn fields questions from Wexley and Kin, Rey keeps her eyes trained out the window as she thinks. 

Ben Solo, shy and awkward and strangely earnest, too thin for his height, too serious and intense to fit into the Skywalker-Solo golden prodigy mold that his family had been waiting to pour him into. The Ben Solo who'd admired her Quidditch skills and academic ambition, the Ben Solo who'd seen her in her cheap dress and horrible shoes and escorted her onto the dance floor anyway, the Ben Solo who'd rescued her from the bottom of the Hogwarts lake.

The Ben Solo who'd obliquely promised that they would see each other again, someday.

There hadn’t been anything about him that marked him as having an affinity for the Dark. He was moody, and perhaps a bit ruthless in his Tournament tasks, and perhaps a bit too Legilimency-happy, but, at least on the outside, he seemed an unlikely candidate for such radical machinations.

Of course, that was until their wands connected. Everything she thought she’d figured out about him turned on its head. All of her presumptions invalidated by that glimpse, that strange, crystal-clear moment of true sight—

And here he supposedly is—or, at least, his associates—somewhere in the obscure, quiet countryside of Eaton, setting their master plan into motion. 

And here she is, being deployed to perform recon on their activities.

She frowns, and wonders if this is all a coincidence, or if perhaps she's being manipulated.

\---

“You're sure, ma'am?”

“Yes, I'm sure. I haven't detected any strange goings-on in this part of Eaton for years now, magical or otherwise. Trust me, this place is clean.”

Rey frowns as she scrutinizes the time-ravaged face of the elderly woman she's questioning. The woman is a wand repairwoman, although her day job, as far as Muggles are concerned, is simply a craftswoman of wooden trinkets, to sell to tourists at the only pub in the town.

“Are you sure, Madam Unduli? Anything would be helpful at this point.”

“Most certain, young lady. There is nothing amiss in this town, I assure you.”

The woman stares straight into her eyes, unblinking, and Rey sighs before looking away.

“All right,” she says. “Thank you for your time. If anything does come up, please don't hesitate to place an inquiry with the Ministry.”

“Of course,” the woman says, her face breaking into a wide smile. Rey can feel Madam Unduli’s eyes on the back of her head as she steps out of the cramped shop and walks quickly up the cobblestone path.

The old woman was lying, no doubt about it. But Rey is only supposed to perform a light round of interrogations; she has to get explicit clearance from Dameron in order to move on to more aggressive measures. And so, for now, she mentally marks Luminara Unduli as a potential First Order sympathizer.

When she reaches a coffee shop at the end of the road, across from a traditional English guesthouse and pub, she enters it. The interior is decorated for the Christmas season, and the rustic charm afforded by the pine boughs, the colored lights, and the pervasive aroma of cinnamon would be pleasant, were it not for her frustrating morning.

She seats herself quietly across from Finn and Wexley, who, with their Polyjuice disguises, currently appear as a red-haired girl with freckles and a slender blond mustachioed young man, respectively.

“How do you like this coffee shop?” Wexley immediately asks her, not looking up.

“Would be better if I wasn't deathly allergic to coffee,” Rey replies. Codes exchanged, Finn and Wexley immediately relax.

“How was it?” Rey asks. Finn and Wexley had gone to visit a wizard in the area—a local farmer whose crops, charmed to look like corn, were actually various species of Dittany plants.

“Dead end,” Finn sighs, just as Kin, in his Polyjuice disguise as a curvy college-age brunette, walks into the shop and scans its occupants none-too-subtly.

“He said he doesn't know of anything,” Wexley continues as Kin sees them and begins threading between the tables in their direction. “But we think he’s lying.”

Kin quickly gives his code, before plopping down with a dejected sigh.

“No luck?” Finn asks.

“No,” Kin drawls, “that smug bastard. If the Ministry allowed us to use Veritaserum, well, that might get us somewhere.”

They've been at this for days, working their way through the list of local witches and wizards, but so far, the people they’ve interrogated have not admitted to knowing anything about the First Order. And with even Veritaserum off limits, as mandated by the Ministry, Rey is beginning to feel frustrated at their lack of progress.

“Didn't get anywhere with mine, either,” she mutters, glancing down at her hands. “We'll have to ask the Ministry to reconsider.”

“All right,” Finn sighs, drumming his fingers on the table restlessly. “Let's meet back at home. We'll see if our reports can get them to budge.”

\---

On the way back to the safe house, Rey, meandering along the path despite the biting cold, decides on a whim to diverge from her assigned route. She veers off the main road, her feet taking her along a route that she's spent time studying on a map; not ten minutes later, she's walking by the house where, according to the portfolio that Dameron had given her, Phasma had been sighted.

Rey frowns, deep in thought, her puffed breaths like airy spun cotton, as she stumps through the snow on her way past the house. 

Why would Phasma leave her home, her friends, her highly coveted status as a member of the Phasma clan, to join an American renegade? She never seemed like someone who would give two shits about the magical community integrating with the Muggle world; in fact, given what little Rey knows about her, the pureblood, platinum-blonde woman would probably want absolutely nothing to do with Muggles.

So what could have drawn Phasma to Ren's cause?

The soft, inch-long hairs at the base of Rey's neck stand suddenly to attention, and she shivers despite her thick woolens. She slows her steps, looking around herself, before stopping completely.

She's being watched.

She spins in a slow circle, surveying the nearby houses, the walled yards. A Muggle is getting into his car, but he's not paying any attention to her at all. There is no other movement on the street, no children barreling through the snow, not even a breeze stirring the trees and shrubbery.

She turns to look at the house where Phasma had been spotted.

It’s a dilapidated old thing, the brick and stone weatherbeaten and colorless, the scraggly shrubbery in a hopeless state of overgrowth. The only spot of color on the property appears to be the faded red-painted door. There isn't anyone in the windows, of course; the house is marked on official documents as abandoned, and is boarded up securely.

But the sense of being watched intensifies, and somehow, Rey knows that someone is watching her from inside the house.

She briefly considers using a _Revelio_ , or perhaps Legilimency, but talks herself down. This is supposed to be a recon mission; the protocol is to retreat, confer, analyze, report back to the Ministry. 

But she knows how Wexley, Kin, and especially Dameron would respond to a “feeling of being watched.”

She turns her back on the house and continues on her way, struggling to keep her steps measured and calm.

\---

Later that night, after an early dinner, Rey retreats to her room on the pretext of being tired, and sits cross-legged on her lumpy bed and faded quilt, eyes screwed shut. She meditates until the Polyjuice potion wears off, before crossing the room to her Shrinking Bag and retrieving from it a few materials—a blank sheet of wrinkled parchment, a small bag of fine powdery sand from the magic-laced Erg Chebbi of Morocco, a handful of pebbles from the stony shore of an ancient sun-washed monastery in Croatia.

She's become an accomplished geomancer, and the spell comes naturally to her. Taking a deep breath, Rey spreads the parchment out on the floorboards of her room, and mutters an incantation as she scatters the sand and pebbles over the crinkled paper.

The weak lights in her room flicker, and she frowns as she reads the patterns in the strewn sand and rock. 

The answer to her unspoken question slowly unspools before her eyes in the earthen materials.

_Very soon._

She isn't sure if that's the answer she wants. With shaking hands, she waves the materials back into her Shrinking Bag. She sits heavily down on her bed, and remains still, her mind racing, for a long time.

\---

That night, Rey dreams.

It’s cold. Still. Snowy. The freezing air smells pleasantly of evergreen, snow, hearth smoke. A quiet stretch of semi-rural land in the dead of night, with sleeping houses scattered far apart over sprawling, rolling hills. Unlike in London, nightfall here is absolute, unyielding; the darkness covers everything in an inky, plush blanket of oblivion. 

She touches down from her strange, floating state, her bare feet leaving no marks in the thick snow. She stares long and hard at her surroundings. Something about it all is familiar.

She then turns to look at the house nearest to her.

The colorless, aged facade, the boarded windows. The faded, red-painted door. Where has she seen that?

Something about the house beckons to her as soon as she sets eyes on it, and in her dream-addled state, she cannot refuse. She walks toward the house, slowly. Up to the front door of the house. She reaches hesitantly for the doorknob. Grasps it. Turns.

As the door swings open, the heavy veil of magic that had been concealing the house falls away, pooling around her bare ankles, and she _sees_ the house for the first time.

She peers into the room that has been bared to her, and is surprised to find it brimming with signs of life. A dying fire sputters away in the hearth; cups of tea and coffee, still steaming, sit abandoned on the coffee table. Under the tea and coffee are scattered sheets of parchment, on which indecipherable text and drawings are scrawled by an unfamiliar hand; on the wall, an enchanted map, showing the live traffic patterns of downtown London, is tacked. 

The entire room is off; the edges of it are wispy, dissolving into powdery curls of smoke; the light of the fire and the candles are blown out, and the shadows of the room are just slightly darker than they should be, reaching into the light of the room as though trying to overwhelm it.

But this room, this wrongness, isn’t what was calling her. She can still feel the tugging, just under the tender skin of her chest; it propels her further on. She edges through the room, following a flickering light in the hallway, and as she draws closer, she begins to hear voices.

“...don’t understand. _Help_ me understand why we’re changing the plan. We’re _this_ close to owning the Ministry.”

Whoever is speaking sounds furious. Rey winces, but draws ever closer, unable to resist; she rounds the bend in the hallway, and comes upon a circle of people standing in the cramped candlelit kitchen. She can’t see faces, can’t make out exact physical details; she can only see their shapes silhouetted against the candlelight. 

One of them, standing off silently to the side, observing the conversation, is tall and slender; Rey instantly gets a sense of piercing arctic-blue eyes, of a helmet of bright platinum hair, of arch, deliberate aristocracy.

_Phasma?_

“I know what I’m doing,” a deep voice responds in a decidedly American accent. “Something’s come up that I didn’t anticipate.”

The voice seems to come from the tallest shape; as soon as Rey looks over at it, she knows without a doubt that that’s what the tugging in her chest has been leading her to.

She steps close to the shape, even dares to bring her face close to it. She closes her eyes. She gets a fleeting impression of broad shoulders, dark hair, flinty eyes. A dark, roiling energy beneath the surface; a magical presence that is strong, stronger than any she’s ever felt.

“It would be helpful if you at least told us what this _something_ is, and why we’re going out to get it at this unreasonable hour, when you yourself said that we must not diverge from the original plan—” The raspy, angered voice from earlier.

“It’s no use raging on like this, Ventress,” the tall figure next to her replies smoothly. “I—”

The voice cuts off suddenly, and the hairs at the base of Rey’s neck shoot up to attention. She flinches away and looks up at the hulking shape next to her. She still can’t see who or what it is, but she can feel its eyes on her.

She backs away a step. Perhaps she’s mistaken. Perhaps it can’t actually _see_ her—

“It’s you,” it whispers. 

She glimpses dark eyes under dark, thick brows, with sudden clarity. Murky green lakewater. A flash of white-hot flame. 

_I see you._

She jolts upright in her bed, her nightclothes soaked through with her own sweat. She tumbles out of her sheets, landing on the ground with a graceless thump; she grabs her wand, throws the door of her bedroom open, and runs down the hall.

“Wake up,” she shouts as she runs. “We don’t have a moment to lose. Wake _up_!”

“For fuck’s sake,” Kin yells from his bedroom, his voice muffled. “What is it?”

“They’re coming,” Rey replies, stopping outside Finn’s door and knocking ruthlessly on the thin wooden slab.

“Who’s coming?” Wexley demands sleepily as he pushes his door open. 

“ _Them_ ,” she snaps impatiently. “Ren. Phasma. Ventress. All the others. They know where we are.”

Finn opens his door, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Dear god, Rey,” he mumbles. “How do you know that they’re coming?”

“I saw them. Just now, in a dream—”

“Hang on,” Kin interrupts, sneering. “Are you saying that you _dreamed_ of Ren and his cronies? And now you think they’re actually coming?”

“It’s not like that,” Rey insists, hating Kin just then. “It wasn’t an ordinary dream.”

“What was it like, then?”

“It was—” Rey frowns in frustration. “It was like a vision. Like looking into a pensieve, but watching the present, not a memory.”

“This is ridiculous,” Kin spits; Wexley looks on silently. “Next time you wake us up in the middle of the night, Solana, it better be because of something more serious than your PMS.”

Rey bristles, and advances on Kin. “How _fucking_ dare you—?”

Before anyone can jump between the two of them, the unmistakable sound of Apparition cracks like distant lightning, just outside the safe house. 

Everyone freezes.

“Are we expecting company?” Finn asks in a low voice.

Rey, not bothering to respond, gives Kin a withering glare, before running on her toes back into her room and peering out the window. The other three follow close behind, and there’s a collective intake of breath as they survey the ring of dark figures surrounding the house, their wands raised, seemingly chanting an incantation in unison.

Rey takes a step back, her fingers tightening around her wand.

“Brace,” is all she has time to say before the safe house implodes.

\---

Rey comes to slowly. Every inch of her body hurts, and for a moment, it feels as though every inch of her is petrified as well, down to her eyelashes. But she’s able to move her eyelids after a moment of concentrated effort, and she cracks an eye open, and is met only with darkness. 

Beside her, someone is speaking.

“...gave our location away to Ren, for all we know. You can never trust a Slytherin,” someone is sneering. Kin.

“Don’t say that.” Finn’s voice. “You saw her; she was just as surprised and terrified as we were. Besides, _you’re_ the one who didn’t even believe that her vision was real in the first place.”

“Oh, and you did?”

“I didn’t discount it from the get-go! You Brits—I will never understand you—”

Finn cuts off as Rey raises herself up on her elbows, wincing with pain.

“Jesus,” Wexley says beside her, rushing to help her up into a sitting position. “We thought you were a goner for sure, Solana.”

Rey mumbles incoherently in response, wiping her forehead gingerly with the back of her hand. Her fingers feel grimy and dusty, and her nose itches, and her throat is bone-dry.

“Where are we?” She croaks.

“Not sure,” Finn replies. “It’s definitely not the safe house, though.”

“I can see that,” Rey mutters. “Actually, I take that back. I can't really see anything.”

“Wexley came to first,” Finn says, making shuffling noises as he scoots closer to her. “He says when he woke up, we were already here.”

“I assume they have our wands?”

“Yep.”

“Any of you see or talk to any of them?”

“Nope.”

Rey frowns. “Well, they must want something with us if they haven't killed us yet.”

“Maybe they're ransoming us,” Kin suggests.

“Please,” Rey scoffs. “We're not nearly important enough to be ransomed.”

“Well, do you have suggestions? You're the one who saw them in your dream.”

“Yes, Kin, they took the time to explain their evil master plan to me.”

“Well, I just—”

Suddenly, there's a murmured incantation, and a deafening screech of metal against rusty metal; Rey flinches at the grating sound. Then, there's a flash of ghostly wand light, and Rey finds herself staring up into the face of Gwendoline Phasma.

There's a long pause as Phasma surveys the four prisoners, and as the four prisoners stare back at her blankly. Phasma’s platinum locks, once several feet long and the envy of every Slytherin girl, are chopped away, leaving her with a pixie cut of sorts; her lips are painted their usual vibrant war-paint red; her normally-pale complexion appears deathly in the blue-toned light of her wand.

“He wants to see you,” Phasma finally says, tilting her ghostly face in Rey's direction.

“Who?” Kin asks.

Phasma stares at him, before turning her back with a sweep of her black cashmere cloak and walking away in her three-inch-heeled boots, not looking to see whether Rey followed.

Rey turns panicked eyes to Finn in the rapidly-fading light.

He nods. “Go,” he mouths.

She gets up on wobbly legs and leans heavily against the stone wall as she navigates her way around the metal bars and out into the dark hallway.

As she walks along the hallway, following Phasma’s dim silhouette, she realizes that, even though she was knocked unconscious in her nightclothes, she's wearing her snow boots, her jeans and sweater, her winter cloak. She's even wearing socks, if her toes are to be believed.

How did that happen?

Phasma leads her up a set of steep, winding stairs, towards a faint light. She climbs for what feels like hours, leaning against the rickety railing, the light growing stronger and stronger, until suddenly, she finds herself standing in the kitchen she'd seen in her dream-vision.

Phasma hesitates for a moment, and turns to her.

“Listen,” she murmurs. “I'm sorry for all the shit you went through when we were in school. I should have stood up for you, but I didn't.”

Rey goggles at Phasma.

_What?_

“Uh…” Rey manages to say, but Phasma is already crossing the dimly-lit kitchen and turning the corner into the living room.

Rey has no choice but to follow her.

She steps as quietly as she can into the living room, which is exactly as she saw it in her dream-vision—the struggling fireplace, the cups on the coffee table, the enchanted map on the wall.

Around the coffee table and the assortment of battered couches and armchairs stand various dark shapes. Except, like Phasma, they aren't merely shapes; they're people, of various statures and postures and presences. Rey stops in the doorway and surveys the room; the others, once her presence is noticed, stop talking and stare back at her. Some of them are, Rey realizes with a shock, familiar—Orson Krennic from the Slytherin Quidditch team, and Dopheld Mitaka, a young, mousey Hufflepuff whom no one at school had taken seriously, and Jessika Pava, a reticent Gryffindor two years above Rey— _what is a Gryffindor doing here?_ —and—

One of the figures rises from an armchair—a monolith of darkness, standing at least a head taller than everyone else in the room. Rey stares hard at him; his gaze, in return, is a startling mixture of warmth and calculation, open familiarity and wariness.

“Leave us,” he mutters.

The other occupants of the room—about fifteen of them, Rey estimates—leave silently, filing into other parts of the house. 

One of them, a tall, bald, whip-thin woman, narrows her startlingly snake-like eyes at Rey. Then, the woman snaps her eyes to _him_ for a moment, before turning with a huff and storming into the kitchen.

He lowers himself back down in the armchair slowly, and indicates the sofa across from him.

“Sit,” he says, gently.

She obeys.

He taps an empty cup on the coffee table between them, and it fills instantly with steaming, aromatic tea.

“Drink,” he says, pushing the cup towards her.

She takes the cup hesitantly, and obeys; the tea clears her sinuses, soothes her throat, and seems to soften her leaden limbs; it brings a wave of tingling warmth from the roots of her hair down to her fingertips, her toes.

She takes the opportunity to study him for a moment. Same long, beak-like nose, same angular jaw and wide, full lips, same watching eyes. His shoulders and long limbs have filled out, and his hair is longer, concealing the saucer-like ears; and his bearing is slightly older, less nervous. But that seriousness, that intensity, that unblinking attention—those remain unchanged; in fact, if anything, they are more acute, more focused.

It’s definitely him.

“Will you attack me if I return your wand to you?” He asks presently.

She hesitates, before shaking her head no. He holds the wand he'd used to conjure her tea towards her; she accepts it from him, startled. How had she not recognized her own wand? And how had it taken to him so easily?

“I assume you’ve looked into the connection between our wands,” he says as he watches her put her wand away in her robe.

She glances up at him.

“What do you suppose it means? About us?” He asks.

She swallows. 

_I didn’t think it was actually you,_ she wants to say. But the words, somehow, remain stuck in her throat. 

“Was it you?” He asks softly. “Was it you that I sensed here, earlier tonight?”

_Yes._

“You don’t want to speak to me?”

It’s not that she doesn’t want to. She's afraid to. She doesn’t know what to say that would befit the situation. “How have you been”? “I missed you”? “Why are you trying to out the magical community to the Muggles”?

“That’s all right,” he says. “We have plenty of time.” He shifts his weight forward, his elbows resting on his knees; in the dimness of the living room, the sudden nearness of him is frightening. She leans backwards almost subconsciously.

“You know,” he says, almost conversationally, “I remember when we first met. Do you? That autumn day, out by that abandoned hut. You were studying geomancy. I was running into the forbidden woods. I never did find that Room of Requirement, by the way. Guess I didn’t actually need it.”

He waits for her to give some kind of response; she gives none.

“And the Yule Ball. I don’t remember much of the Ball, actually. Just you, looking so uncomfortable, hating your dress and your shoes. And the way people looked at you.” He purses his lips. “I wanted to hurt them for that.

“And the second task, of course. And how _angry_ you were after that. I understand why you were angry. I know how demeaning it must have felt.”

She looks down at her clasped hands.

He’s silent for a long moment.

“I _am_ sorry for putting you through that,” he says. “I didn’t know there would be repercussions for taking you to the Ball.”

_It wasn’t your fault._

“Rey,” he says abruptly, “I have to know. When our wands connected, after the second task—did you—see anything?”

_That_ gets her attention. 

Her eyes shoot up to his face; he’s leaning in, his eyes glittering.

“I—” She stutters. 

It was something that she’d written off as a hallucination when none of the texts made any mention of it. Images, sounds, bright bolts of emotion—when her wand connected with his, all those years ago, she was yanked through a dizzying array of his memories, as well as unsettling, contextless impressions of an older man—a hulking presence, powerful beyond reckoning, his hair a banner of unruly black, his eyes glowing bright gold. Sick with the Darkness, and yet made unimaginably, unmitigatedly powerful in it; in a strange way, made whole by it. Driven to the edge of sanity by a purpose, a feeling of emptiness that he would spend his entire life trying to fill.

It had only lasted a moment. Rey had thought perhaps the connection of their wands had triggered a neurological irregularity that caused her to hallucinate. Or perhaps it had been him—some Legilimency prank gone wildly out of control? She wasn’t sure. Either way, it was so inexplicable and disturbing that she’d rationalized it away, deep into the back of her mind.

“You saw something too?” He presses, watching her, unblinking.

“Yes,” she whispers slowly, her throat gone dry.

“It was so much, in little more than a moment. But I feel as though I saw everything about you, Rey,” he says, voice gone soft once again. “I saw the orphanage. You being neglected and abused, made to endure the short tempers of adults. I saw you being admitted into Hogwarts after years of wondering if your magic was just a manifestation of insanity. I saw that spark of hope as you arrived at Hogwarts, wondering if that was where you belonged. I saw you being bullied and ostracized for having no family; I saw you spending your holidays alone; I saw your own fellow Slytherins reject you, assuming that you were a Mudblood. A nobody.”

She fights the urge to squirm.

“But then, I saw—the most remarkable thing.”

She looks up at the sudden awe in his voice.

“I saw you straddling the world, Rey. I saw you take what you were owed. I saw you fall away, and I saw you _rise_.”

“Fall away…?” She echoes, lost.

“From the Light. From the Ministry. From the people who have used you and tossed you aside, all your life. I saw you turn to the Dark.”

_No_. Rey’s gut reaction is so strong that she almost vomits. She shakes her head vehemently.

“That’s impossible,” she insists. “I would never.”

“Never abandon the people who have abused you your entire life? Never realize that the Light has done nothing but hold you back?” He sneers faintly. “The Dark has no hierarchy, Rey. The Dark doesn’t care about where you come from, or who you think you are, or who other people think you are. The Dark only cares about your intrinsic value. To the Light, you’re a nobody, a stepping stone on someone else’s path to fame and legacy. But to the Dark—to me—you’re invaluable. ” 

_Invaluable._ The word shakes Rey to the core. No one has ever called her that before. Part of her wants to laugh—how dare he?—and part of her wants to sob—how _dare_ he?

She tries once again to cling to what she knows.

“I saw things, too, when our wands connected,” she says with a shaking voice; her knuckles are white as she clenches her hands into fists. “I saw the way your parents chose their work over you, every time. And the way you loved them anyway. I saw the way your classmates pick on you for being famous, even when you wanted nothing to do with that fame. I saw the way your—your father—”

She swallows.

“Go on,” he whispers, the reflection of the fireplace flickering in his burning eyes. “Say it.”

“I saw the way you tried to save him,” she says; her eyes fill with unexpected tears. “The way you tried to use the Dark to save him, when the Light failed. The way it corrupted him beyond recognition. And then, I saw...I saw you kill your father out of mercy and guilt.”

“My mother disavowed me fully after that,” he says softly. “And my uncle...he took me in, in hopes that he could _fix_ me. But if you’ve done your homework—and I assume you have—then you know how that turned out.”

“But why?” She whispers. She’d seen the memory, she’d felt the emotions; but she still couldn’t quite understand. “Why did you turn to the Dark to save your father?” _Why did I not see until then that you had the Dark in you?_

He looks away, his expression suddenly tight.

“I'd been told my whole life that the Dark is evil. But the Light had only ever taken from me—it had never given me anything. And the Dark—it became a way for me to rebel. A way for me to distance myself from everything I thought I knew.”

“You must have known since you were a child that Dark wizards have only been proponents of selfishness and destruction.”

“Previous Dark wizards abused their freedom to persecute Muggles and Muggle-borns; this is true,” he concedes diplomatically. “But my brand of Dark magic—well, it’s—different. You see, Rey, the uncrossable void between Light and Dark—it’s always bothered me. If the entire spectrum exists, why is only part of it worth studying? Why is the Dark automatically taboo? Why do magicians who have a natural affinity for the Dark find themselves labeled as evil?”

Rey squirms, uncomfortable at being asked such basic questions. “The Dark is disorder. It is violence, lawlessness, indulgence, excess—”

“It is chaos, I know. But has it ever occurred to you that the chaos must exist for a reason?”

“Is that why you want to out the magical community to the Muggles? To promote chaos?”

“Not ‘out.’ Don’t you see, Rey? The followers of the Light—your Ministry, my MACUSA—tell us, whether through laws or through norms, that things must have a certain order to them. Purebloods first, Muggleborns next, Muggles last. They tell us that we are better off in our own world, boxed off from the others, unpolluted by the ignorance and boorishness of everyone else. They tell us that our self-worth comes from our ability to use magic, our pedigree, our grades and test scores, our jobs. 

“But the Dark—the Dark tells us that we were always meant to coexist; it tells us that we must live alongside each other, that we must abandon our manmade notions of class and worth, that we must allow what is structured to become unstructured—chaos. Don’t you see the potential in that, Rey? Muggle ingenuity, Muggle technology, Muggle democracy—combined with the riches of both Light and Dark magical knowledge—the possibilities to better the human race are _endless,_ Rey.”

“Solo,” she says; he barrels on, caught up in his idyllic vision.

“The Light has been telling us that we are stronger if we tie our arms behind our back; the Dark tells us that freeing our arms is just the beginning.”

“Ben,” she tries. “It won’t work. People have tried to integrate magical and Muggle communities; it’s always ended in violence and paranoia.”

“Not if we follow my plan,” he says, almost feverishly; he gets to his feet and begins pacing back and forth along the narrow space between his chair and the table, his thick black cloak flapping with every step. “I’ve studied history, I’ve gone through why things went wrong. It will work this time.”

“I saw your future, too,” she says loudly, also standing.

He freezes and stares at her.

“I saw your future,” she repeats, “and believe me, it doesn’t work. You don’t win.”

“What _exactly_ ,” he says, “did you see?”

“I...I saw you rise. In the Darkness. I saw you become unbelievably powerful. I saw you drop a pebble into a lake, and I saw the ripples turn into waves of radical change.”

“That sounds like a win to me.”

“Maybe you succeed at this. Maybe your plan works, when no one else’s attempts have worked in the past. But it doesn’t bring your father back; it doesn’t make your mother love you. It doesn’t fill that void, Ben.”

He turns his back on her abruptly, his shoulders towering above her; she can feel the tension boiling from him, the crippling insecurity, the festering pain. She wonders how she hadn't sensed any of that all those years ago.

For a long moment, he doesn’t speak, doesn’t move; she wonders if she’s gotten through to him.

“Maybe it won’t bring my father back,” he finally says in a voice almost too quiet to hear, “and maybe it won’t make my mother...love me. But what do you believe, after all these years, Rey? Do you really believe that the Ministry—the entire magical community—is right? Are you really going to go back to your boss and help him take me down, knowing that I'm not evil, knowing that he won’t thank you for it? That he might even punish you for not killing me on the spot?”

Rey feels wooden. “It’s not up to me,” she says. “The Ministry is the ultimate authority—”

“Your Ministry has long since lost its right to rule,” he all but spits. “If it sees fit to treat people like you the way they do—if it doesn’t care enough about its own people to defend them against discrimination—then they’re not worth defending. They must be made to see their mistakes, and if they refuse, they must be taken down.”

“Don’t you hear yourself?” Rey asks, her voice shaking. “You’re insane.”

“I have a radical idea,” he chuckles, finally turning to face her. “It’s been in every fiber of my being since I first realized that I was a wizard. And I’m going to reach out, and I’m going to bring it to fruition, Rey.”

“What do you want with me?” She asks tremulously. “Why did you bring me here?”

He eyes her for a long moment, his face slowly losing its mocking levity.

“Join me,” he says.

“...What?”

“I need you by my side. Don’t return to your cage, Rey. Don’t return to the people who don’t deserve your loyalty, your service. Let me set you free.”

“Ben,” she says quietly. “There must be another way.”

He levels a strange look at her. “I’m not Ben anymore.”

“Don’t go this way. Don’t ask me to do this. Please.”

“What is it about this Ministry of yours that has you so fully in its thrall? What do they have to do to you to shake you loose?”

Rey chews on her lip, frowning at him, caught off guard by his question. She’s spent her whole life with her neck bowed, hoping despite her orphaned status and her Slytherin designation to achieve respect and recognition in the magical community. Maybe even to make it to Dameron’s post—maybe even surpass him. She’s never looked too closely at why she wants these things, or how much she’s willing to sacrifice. 

Why _does_ she keep going back? 

“You need time,” he observes as he paces back to the armchair and sits down. “To say your goodbyes, to come to terms with the new order.”

“I don’t,” she says, hoping that she sounds firm.

“To find the will to take what you deserve. Yes,” he says, nodding slowly. “You need time.”

“I _don’t_.”

Not seeming to hear her, he touches the tip of his own wand to his throat and mutters something that she cannot hear; almost instantly, the First Order members who had left them come striding back in, glancing between her and him with curiosity. 

As they draw near, Rey leaps to her feet, her hand finding the handle of her wand.

But he stands and puts a hand on her shoulder, holding her in place. She doesn’t realize until that moment exactly how large his hands are, how strong his grip is; she freezes, suddenly feeling a flash of fear.

He merely looks at her for a moment, expression inscrutable.

“I want you to know,” he murmurs, “that you are a formidable witch in your own right, and that you deserve more than the Ministry has given you. Whether or not you choose to join me, my opinion of you won’t change.” 

Before she can process his words, he presses the tip of his wand gently to her temple.

“ _Somnium_ ,” he mutters. It’s the last thing she remembers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chatty cathies this chapter


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who has been leaving comments!
> 
> *Edit: please note, I added a new tag

When Rey comes to, she’s in a Ministry debriefing room, propped up in a chair, wrapped in her cloak. Her mouth tastes foul, her eyes are gummy, and her hair, she’s sure, is a mess. She disentangles herself from her cloak, pausing to check her pockets—her bag is there, but her wand is not. The absence of her wand makes her uneasy, but there isn’t much to be done about it, so she drapes her cloak over the back of the chair and rises slowly to her feet.

She winces as she stretches her shoulders, her back, her legs; she feels stiff as a board, as though she’d slept in an uncomfortable position for hours. Thinking of her magicked sleep makes her think of the _Somnium_ spell; thinking of the _Somnium_ spell makes her think of the caster. And thinking of her caster makes her sit back down.

It really is him. Kylo Ren really is Ben Solo.

She fiddles nervously, her mind racing. How had she ended up here? What time is it—what day? Where is her wand? Did _he_ just drop her off in front of the Ministry, or...? 

She gets up, tries hesitantly at the doorknob. Locked—not that she’s surprised. She shoves at the door for good measure, before plopping back down in her seat. 

Almost immediately, the lock clicks, and the door swings open. She jumps back to her feet as Dameron walks in, flanked by two other Aurors.

“Solana,” Dameron mumbles in greeting, slanting his gaze down at the table instead of looking her in the eye. As usual. “Great to see you’re okay.”

“Where are the others?” Rey asks, glancing nervously at the two other Aurors, who post themselves silently on either side of the door and stare straight ahead.

“Wexley’s up and about, doing fine. Boyega just woke up. Kin’s still out cold.”

“But they’re okay?”

“Yes. A little rattled, is all.”

“Have Wexley and Boyega told you what happened?”

“We’ve debriefed them, yes.” Dameron eyes her with something akin to suspicion, which rattles her, before sitting down at the end of the table opposite from her. He silently indicates for her to sit; she does so distractedly, still scrutinizing his expression.

“Where is my wand?” She asks quietly.

He says nothing, shifting into a more comfortable position and crossing his arms over his chest and fixing her with a stare. 

“We’ll get to that,” he answers. “Right now, I want you to tell me everything.”

\---

By the time she’s done, Dameron is leaning forward, his elbows on the table, squinting at her.

“And you refused?” He presses.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“I refused on no uncertain terms, sir.”

“I was the Hogwarts Champion at the Tournament, Solana. I know that he asked you to the Ball.”

“It was nothing,” Rey says, narrowing her eyes. “We barely said three words to each other the whole time.”

“But after that—I mean, the whole school knew about your wands connecting.”

“So what? So our wand cores come from the same bird. Do you think that means I’m just going to abandon my post as an Auror and follow this complete stranger on his insane crusade?” Rey demands, rising in her seat.

The other two Aurors move to restrain her, their hands finding their wands, but Dameron waves them aside.

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry for needling you,” Dameron says, holding his hands up in a placating manner. “I need to be sure that you didn’t agree to work with him, in any way.”

“I didn’t.”

“Believe me, I know,” Dameron says, glancing away. “But I’ve got my orders. You and the others are going to be placed on leave, for the time being—”

“What?”

“—and we’re going to have to put you under magical surveillance, at least until Ren is in custody. You will be confined to your home—”

“ _What?_ That’s ridiculous! You don’t trust me?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think, Solana,” Dameron says, grimacing. “It’s been decided already, by the Ministry.”

“So that’s why you confiscated my wand? Then what was the whole point of this debrief, if you’ve already decided that you aren’t going to trust me?”

“We need to know everything we can about Ren. The fact that his actual identity is Ben Solo will help a great deal. President Organa is being questioned at this moment for keeping the fact that her son is Kylo Ren a secret from the rest of the world, and we are tracking down his uncle as we speak.”

“It sounds like I’m helping you break apart an already-fractured family,” Rey snaps.

“They made their decisions, and now they’re going to have to deal with the consequences. Your role in all of this is done, though, for now. I know house arrest is unpleasant, but try to see it as an opportunity to rest and recuperate. I’m told that your captivity was unpleasant.”

“It lasted two hours, _max_ , sir. I feel fine.”

“Look, just…” He sighs, almost irritably. “Do as you’re commanded, all right? I promise this won’t take long.”

Dameron’s placating tone, his look-on-the-bright-side spiel, does nothing to dampen Rey’s growing anger. It doesn’t change the fact that the Ministry decided, without even hearing her side of the story, that she isn’t to be trusted; it doesn’t change the fact that her protestations of her own innocence have been met with bald distrust. From her own boss, no less—a man she’s worked under for years.

“Is it the fact that I was a Slytherin?” She asks quietly.

Dameron frowns.

“Is it because I have no family, no friends? Or is it because I happen to live among and sympathize with Muggles, rather than looking down on them?”

“Solana,” Dameron says in an exasperated tone, “what are you talking about? Look, I don’t have time for this. Grab anything you might need from your office, and go home. We’ve already got a team monitoring your flat, to make sure that Ren doesn’t make another move on you; you'll be safer at your flat.”

_Right. Safer._ Rey sits, seething silently, all speech fled from her mind. She’d refused to take Kylo’s hand, even though the tugging in her chest drew her to him, even though his words filled her with a strange golden warmth, even though he was the first person to ever really see her. When he looked at her at the abandoned house, it was like when he’d looked at her for the first time, back when they were at Hogwarts. That frightening, exhilarating sensation of being _seen_.

She’d refused his hand out of pure loyalty to the Ministry, and now—now, she is being distrusted, and even punished, for it.

“Can I at least have my wand back?” She tries.

“You won’t have any need for it,” Dameron replies flatly.

“I know. I just feel strange, not having my wand—”

“I understand. You’ll get your wand back when your confinement ends.”

Rey stares incredulously at her boss for a long moment, before getting to her feet and shrugging on her coat with more force than necessary.

Dameron stands as well. “Look, I _am_ sorry,” he says, as though he thinks that spitting out more meaningless words will make her feel better. “It was me in charge, I wouldn’t have done things this way. I can only imagine what you’re feeling—but I really think it would be best if you just—fall in line and—” He makes a subconscious shooing motion with his hands, before catching himself.

_God._

“It’s fine,” Rey says tightly. “I’ll go home.” _I’ll follow orders._

Dameron looks at her warily. It’s probably the first time he’s really looked her in the eye.

She turns for the door; the two stranger Aurors, who have stood silently until this point, move aside to allow her through, and follow her closely as she walks numbly to the lift.

\---

When Rey arrives at her flat, with the two Aurors in tow, one of them muscles her into her flat while the other stands outside her door and waves his wand, muttering under his breath.

“Wait,” Rey protests, “I need to see my neighbor. I have her plastic container, and she has my cat—”

“Not now,” the man manhandling her grunts, glaring down at her; with a final shove, he sends her stumbling into her living room. Rey recovers quickly, and glares at him, seriously considering punching him, even though his boxy jaw looks hard enough to break her knuckles.

“I wouldn’t try anything if I was you,” he says, his fingers cracking as he clenches them into fists. His partner finishes casting a soundproofing spell, and begins a dissimulation spell that makes her apartment appear uninhabited. 

The Auror who’d forced her into her flat points his wand at her ankle and mutters something, and a magical parole band materializes and winds itself around her ankle; as she watches with horror, the band takes on the shape of a snake devouring its own tail, its eyes glinting with too-lifelike rage.

She's known that this would essentially be house arrest, but the sight of the ankle bracelet makes her heart drop into her stomach.

“Don’t try any magic,” the one who’d been spellcasting outside her apartment warns as he sheaths his wand in his robes and tosses his blond bangs out of his face. “The Ministry will know immediately, and the consequences won’t be pretty.”

“What consequences?” Rey demands; her body seems torn between raging and sobbing. “This isn’t fair. There are no official charges against me—the Ministry can’t just arbitrarily lock someone in their own home—”

“Have a good evening, Miss Solana,” the one who’d shoved her into her own home grunts, before he slams the door shut. She hears him murmur something, and she smells the stench of burning metal, and she realizes that he’s fusing the locking mechanism of her front door.

She flies against the door, slamming against it with her frustratingly small fists.

“This is injustice!” She screams; she can’t help it anymore. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve been loyal every step of the way. I told you everything that I know!”

She hears only silence; the two Aurors probably Apparated before she’d even thrown herself against her door. She kicks at the door with all of her strength, and, ignoring the throbbing of her toes, collapses to her knees and leans her forehead against the pulped wood.

_Enough is enough._

No. She needs to remain strong. She needs to be the best of them all. She needs to… She needs to…

_Submit?_

Through the door, she hears the sound of another door opening; there’s a short creak, followed by a beat of silence, and then a longer creak. Footsteps approaching her door. Rey gets to her feet and peeks through the peephole.

“Rey?” Ahsoka calls through the door, rapping lightly on the wood. “Was that you? Are you back?”

“Ahsoka,” Rey responds frantically, her voice rising in volume. “Ahsoka, I’m in here. Call—call—” Call whom? The Muggle police?

But the Auror who’d cast the soundproofing spell obviously knew what he was doing; Ahsoka appears to listen for a response, clearly not having heard Rey. After a moment, Ahsoka releases the breath she’d been holding and steps reluctantly away from Rey’s door. 

Rey hears a scratching sound at the base of her door.

“C’mon, Cat,” Ahsoka mutters resignedly, bending down to shoo Rey’s cat away. “She’s not here.”

Cat, to his immense credit, plants his stubby little body in front of Rey’s door and meows loudly. It occurs to Rey that perhaps her cat can smell her, even if he can’t see or hear her.

“Cat,” she murmurs, squatting down and poking her fingers as far under her door as they can go. “Mummy’s right here. Good kitty.”

“Mrooow.” 

“Come along,” Ahsoka says, bending down to pick the stubborn cat up from the ground. “Let’s get you some dinner.”

Rey listens helplessly as her neighbor and her cat retreat from her door. 

A knot inside her, a massive tangle of denial and self-discipline and pure, stubborn willpower, finally comes undone. She hides her face in her hands.

\---

Rey mopes for longer than she’d like to admit before finally dragging herself to her feet. She shrugs off her cloak, her Shrinking Bag clattering loudly to the ground. She opens the Shrinking Bag and slowly begins unpacking the meager belongings she’d brought with her to Eaton.

After making her way through most of her things, she feels a cool, hard object, round-edged, about the size of her palm, at the bottom of the bag. Not recognizing the feel of the object, she draws it out with suspicion, and stares at the object in her hand. 

A locket? She frowns as she opens the lid cautiously. 

No—she realizes as she peers into the object that it’s actually a tiny pocket mirror, slender and polished to a fine silver luster. She opens the lid wider and examines her tired scowl in the spotless surface.

For a moment, she stares at her own reflection, unable to recognize herself. Has she always looked so worn down? Those faint lines around the inner corners of her eyebrows—when did those appear?

But that’s not the most important question. The most important question is: How did this get into her bag?

She turns it over in her hands, slowly, in the twilit stillness of her apartment. Once. Twice.

On the second turn, something flashes in the mirror.

She looks closer, frowning. Something’s appearing, but she can’t quite tell what it is—

“Rey?”

A blurred image begins to coalesce in the mirror—a long, pale face surrounded by dark hair. That deep voice—

“Rey?” It says again.

No. _It can’t be._

The image rapidly crystallizes. Rey drops the mirror with a shriek, and the fragile thing shatters.

“Oh my god,” Rey exclaims, her hands shaking. She stumbles clear of the mirror shards, somehow avoiding stepping on the fragments. “How did you—”

“Are you clear of the pieces?” His disembodied voice demands. “Don’t step on any of the shards.”

“I fucking know!” Rey snaps, kneeling gingerly at the edge of the mess. “Did you...did you sneak a two-way mirror into my bag? _Why_ are you contacting me again?”

She examines the scattering of mirror shards on the hardwood floor, and sees fragments of his face in each of the pieces—the corner of his mouth, the long bridge of his nose, a glimpse of his hairline. She reaches for a long, slender piece that shows his eyes, and picks it up carefully.

“ _You_ contacted _me,_ Rey,” he says, one of his eyebrows quirking up slightly.

“...What?”

“I snuck the mirror into your bag, yes. And I have the partner mirror. But the connection between the mirrors only opens if one of us is in distress.”

“That’s not fair. I’m constantly in distress, Solo.”

“Perhaps you should consider making a change in your lifestyle, then.”

Rey groans. “You’re going to get me in so much trouble. I can’t be using magic right now.”

“Technically, you aren’t actively using magic.”

“I don’t know if my ankle bracelet is going to care about technicalities.”

“They put a _bracelet_ on you?”

“Well—”

“Have they put you under _house arrest?_ The motherfuckers—”

Rey sighs. “Look, I _really_ can’t be talking to you.”

Someone else's voice mutters something, and Kylo nods to whomever it was before turning back to Rey. “It’s too late. Phasma just informed me that a team of Aurors activated the floo network moments ago, and are heading to fireplace terminals around your apartment.”

Rey bows her head.

“Did you tell them about our meeting?” He asks.

“Yes.”

“Have they put you under house arrest?” He repeats; his voice is gentle.

“Yes,” Rey whispers. “They took my wand. They wouldn’t even let me pick up my cat.”

“I’m on my way,” he says, a crease forming between his eyebrows. 

“What?” Rey panics. “How could your coming here help me?”

“If they’ve detected you using magic, what do you suppose they're going to do to you once they take you in?” He demands tightly. “I don’t understand—why are you still holding on, after how they’ve abused you?”

“They’re not _abusive_ —”

“They’re abusing you, Rey,” he snaps. “This is abuse.”

“Whatever it is, it's not yours to deal with,” Rey says. “I... I'll handle it.”

Kylo stares at her for a long moment, his unblinking gaze made even more discomfiting by the absence of the rest of his face.

“Is that what you want?” He finally asks quietly.

Rey blinks.

“If you want me to leave you to the Ministry—if that’s _really_ what you want—then I’ll respect your wishes. But you have to tell me that that’s what you want.”

Rey works her lips silently. The words that should come easily remain stuck in her throat. She stares at Kylo, wide-eyed.

He waits for her, silent for several moments, searching her face. 

She wants to say what she knows she _should_ say. But…

He disappears from the mirror. 

She realizes that she’s made her choice. 

An echo of his voice unfurls in her mind after his eyes vanish—an echo that she now recognizes as the trace of Legilimency, rather than the fancy of her own mind.

_I’m coming._

She sits there for a moment, staring at the shard of mirror in her hand, before placing it back down on the ground.

She stands on numb feet, and walks slowly to the window in her living room, pushing the curtain aside slowly with shaking fingers.

She scans the streets, the buildings. If there is indeed a team of Aurors headed her way, they will be in Muggle clothes to avoid drawing attention. Every man or woman in a dark coat with their hand in their pocket elicits a spike of fear in Rey’s stomach; every person she catches glancing at her building, however fleetingly, causes her heart to skip a beat.

And then, she catches sight of Dameron. 

He’s standing on the sidewalk, waiting for the crosswalk light to change.

He’s looking at her window.

She drops her curtain and stumbles backward.

The crack of someone Apparating, just outside her door. 

She peeks down at where Dameron had been standing on the sidewalk moments ago. He isn't there. 

Someone muttering urgently, followed by a shimmering sound. Someone is deactivating the spells cast on her flat.

Someone is trying to get in.

When it comes to fight or flight, Rey has learned that she is a fighter. Despite her shaking, she plants her socked feet into the cold floorboards and raises her fists, her breath whooshing from her lungs.

The fused lock bursts into pieces, and the door swings open slowly, revealing _him._

Despite herself, Rey bursts into tears. 

At the same moment, chaos breaks out on the streets below.

He points his wand at her ankle, and her bracelet disintegrates into dust. He crosses to her—he's too tall for her flat, and under normal circumstances it would be funny, but he's here, he's really _here_ , he actually came to get her—and he wraps a protective arm around her, shielding her from the doorway just as another telltale Apparition _crack_ sounds out in the hallway.

Dameron rushes in, wand at the ready. He takes in the sight of Rey in Kylo Ren’s arms, clinging to the front of his cloak for dear life.

Rey watches as Dameron makes up his mind and raises his wand. But Kylo is already a step ahead of them both.

“ _Sectumsempra,_ ” Kylo shouts, and Dameron falls to the ground with an exclamation of pain, blood bubbling up from multiple lacerations scattered all over his body and soaking quickly through his clothes.

Rey breaks out of Kylo’s grip and runs to her boss, kneeling in the quickly-pooling blood. She tries frantically to conjure a wandless healing charm, struggling to concentrate on the flow of magic through her fingers. But wandless magic is still a challenge for her; her charm sputters and falters, and does not seem to do Dameron much good.

Out of ideas, Rey presses her hands to the bloodiest of the gashes on Dameron’s chest. His breaths are wet, gasping things, and his eyes begin to film over as she watches. A sob tears out of Rey’s throat as she realizes that she isn't going to be able to save him.

In between pained breaths, Dameron grasps her arm and gargles her name.

“Yes, sir?” She quavers, peering anxiously into his face.

His lips move torturously slowly.

“Fuck. You.”

She watches, shocked, as the last of his life seeps out of him, and as his feverish, accusatory stare freezes in place.

She yanks her arm from her dead boss’s grip and stands.

At that moment, Ahsoka’s door opens, and Rey watches as her neighbor appears hesitantly at her door, holding Cat.

“Rey,” Ahsoka says, smiling uncertainly. “I thought I heard—”

Ahsoka sees Dameron lying on the ground, dead, and freezes.

“ _Obliviate._ ” Kylo acts swiftly, and Ahsoka’s terrified gaze turns cloudy. Cat jumps down from her arms and picks his way to Rey, his tail perked up with happiness; he steps around Dameron’s body and rubs against Rey’s legs, purring.

Ahsoka seems to wake slowly from her trance.

“Ah,” she says dreamily upon seeing Rey. “Hello, Rey. I...I can't seem to remember...”

Trailing off, Ahsoka wanders away and disappears into her flat, closing her door behind her.

“Rey,” Kylo says gently behind her.

She doesn't respond; she picks up Cat and stands there, scratching agitatedly at the purring cat's ears with still-bloody hands. She feels cold as ice; she feels as though her blood has turned to lava, and that she will burn to a crisp from the inside out; she doesn't quite know what it is she’s feeling.

Outside, the shimmering and blasting of hexes and jinxes ricochet off the walls and streets, punctuated by shouts, screams, the confused fleeing of Muggles.

Behind her, Kylo shifts slightly. “We have to go.”

“Are those First Order witches and wizards down there, fighting the Aurors?”

“Yes.”

“You brought them here.”

He approaches her, and places a hand on her shoulder. “Yes.”

“To get me.”

“Yes. Rey, we have to go.”

She turns to look up at him; his gaze burns with conviction, with rage, with hope. 

He holds out his other hand.

“Come with me,” he whispers.

Cat examines Kylo, ears twitching. Outside, the First Order members, having finished their task, Apparate to the designated rendezvous point and tend to their wounds.

Rey hesitates for a long moment.

She takes his hand.

...

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Be kind to others, and have a happy, safe Halloween :)

**Author's Note:**

> * does a shameless plug dance *
> 
>   * [pressed down, shaken together, running over](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22797028/chapters/54479338) \- modern day AU where Rey and Kylo work at the same company - introspective, slightly dramatic, focus on character development (COMPLETE)
>   * [furball](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23119837/chapters/55319881) \- modern day, casual magic AU where Kylo has a run-in with a small brown cat and things spiral from there - lighthearted, fluffy, short (COMPLETE)
>   * [the black swan](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23474413/chapters/56279338) \- modern day, sci-fi AU based on the movie _Pacific Rim_ \- dark, plot-heavy, equal parts action and introspection/relational development (COMPLETE)
>   * [borrowed sunlight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26686939/chapters/65093515) \- vaguely historical fantasy/mythological AU based on the Chinese myth _The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl_ \- fluffy and romantic, a little awkward, sometimes a little dark. Beware: science is thrown to the wind! (COMPLETE)
>   * [when i look at you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27169441/chapters/66356758) \- Harry Potter AU where Rey and Ben meet during their school years, and then again a few years later - dark and angsty (COMPLETE)
>   * [exultant](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29406645/chapters/72242856) \- 1950s AU with a chronically lying, burgling Rey whose employment by Kylo Ren proves to be life-changing - dark, psychological, suspenseful
> 



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